If from beneath the apse of Amiens Cathedral we take the street leading due south, leaving the railroad station on the left, it brings us to the foot of a gradually ascending hill, some half a mile long--a pleasant and quiet walk enough, terminating on the level of the highest land near Amiens; whence, looking back, the Cathedral is seen beneath us, all but the fleche, our gained hill-top being on a level with its roof-ridge: and, to the south, the plain of France. Somewhere about this spot, or in the line between it and St. Acheul, stood the ancient Roman gate of the Twins, whereon were carved Romulus and Remus being suckled by the wolf; and out of which, one bitter winter's day, a hundred and seventy years ago when Clovis was baptized--had ridden a Roman soldier, wrapped in his horseman's cloak,[5] on the causeway which was part of the great Roman road from Lyons to Boulogne. [Footnote 5: More properly, his knight's cloak; in all likelihood the trabea, with purple and white stripes, dedicate to the kings of Rome, and chiefly to Romulus.] And it is well worth your while also, some frosty autumn or winter day when the east wind is high, to feel the sweep of it at this spot, remembering what chanced here, memorable to all men, and serviceable, in that winter of the year 332, when men were dying for cold in Amiens streets:--namely, that the Roman horseman, scarce gone out of the city gate, was met by a naked beggar, shivering with cold; and that, seeing no other way of shelter for him, he drew his sword, divided his own cloak in two, and gave him half of it. No ruinous gift, nor even enthusiastically generous: Sydney's cup of cold water needed more self-denial; and I am well assured that many a Christian child of our day, himself well warmed and clad, meeting one naked and cold, would be ready enough to give the _whole_ cloak off his own shoulders to the necessitous one, if his better-advised nurse, or mamma, would let him. But this Roman soldier was no Christian, and did his serene charity in simplicity, yet with prudence. Nevertheless, that same night, he beheld in a dream the Lord Jesus, who stood before him in the midst of angels, having on his shoulders the half of the cloak he had bestowed on the beggar. And Jesus said to the angels that were around him, "Know ye who hath thus arrayed me? My servant Martin, though yet unbaptized, has done this." And Martin after this vision hastened to receive baptism, being then in his twenty-third year.[6] [Footnote 6: Mrs. Jameson, Legendary Art, Vol. II., p. 721.] Whether these things ever were so, or how far so, credulous or incredulous reader, is no business whatever of yours or mine. What is, and shall be, everlastingly, _so_,--namely, the infallible truth of the lesson herein taught, and the actual effect of the life of St. Martin on the mind of Christendom,--is, very absolutely, the business of every rational being in any Christian realm.